The unsinkable story of the Titanic

Among the unlikely results of a ship-wreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio's current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad. DiCaprio was lucky to be aboard James Cameron's film Titanic. By now, as everyone knows, the film can be described only in superlatives. It is the most expensive movie ever made, the highest-grossing motion picture of all time, the first film ever to gross $1 billion worldwide. Its soundtrack is -- surprise -- the best-selling ever. And it won more Oscars (11) than any film since, God help us, Ben Hur.

The ship itself may have sunk for good, but its story has been resurrected, with a mixture of horror and glee, in books, documentaries, exhibitions, movies, and even a Broadway musical. And still they come. Herewith, marking the September release of Titanic on home video, a harvest of new books and booklike things.


Titanic and the Making of James Cameron:
The Inside Story of the Three-Year Adventure That Rewrote Motion Picture History
By Paula Parisi
Newmarket, $24.95
ISBN 1557043647

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We recently spoke with entertainment journalist Paula Parisi, author of Titanic and the Making of James Cameron: The Inside Story of the Three-Year Adventure That Rewrote Motion Picture History.

BookPage: How did you meet James Cameron?
Paula Parisi: As the new kid on the block at the Hollywood Reporter, I got the unsavory assignments dumped on my lap, and that included the technology beat. I met Cameron covering a technical symposium where he gave a speech. I was the only reporter there! This was right before Terminator 2 was released, and Cameron wasn't very well known.

BP: How did you wind up his media confidante?
PP: I think he responded to the fact that I was interested in something he was interested in -- the technology, the nuts and bolts, of filmmaking. Most reporters writing about him sensationalized his career and his personality, which he did not respond well to.

BP: Are you working on another book?
PP: I am, but not about a single figure like this book. I will tell you that one thing I came away from this experience with was the fervent hope that James Cameron will begin writing books. He has so many unproduced scripts that would make incredible novels. He is a very gifted writer -- very imaginative and stylistically kind of similar to Elmore Leonard.

BP: Were you already interested in the topic of the Titanic?
PP: No, actually. This book is as much about a man's single-minded obsession with his work, and total commitment and confidence in his own vision, as it is about making a huge budget motion picture. He stuck to his guns, against incredible odds, on all the important points. That's something I think everyone -- not just movie buffs -- can relate to.

REVIEWS BY MICHAEL SIMS

We might as well begin with another superlative -- the two biggest, most impressive, and most expensive books on our list. Even if you barely know the Titanic from the good ship Lollipop, you will enjoy Titanic: An Illustrated History, by Don Lynch. Throughout, the lively text is illuminated by photos, drawings, maps, and the beautiful photorealistic paintings of Ken Marschall, who has emerged as the disaster's visual historian.


Marschall gets his own book, with text by Rick Archbold, in a fascinating survey of his three decades of work, Art of Titanic. Sketches, photos, and 80-plus gorgeous paintings illuminate the complicated process of historical illustration. No photograph can match Marschall's poignant visions of either the gaiety aboard ship or the gloomy depths of the wreckage.


Simon and Schuster is publishing Titanic: Fortune and Fate, the companion volume to the Mariner's Museum exhibition of the same name. Artifacts include personal mementos, letters, and other moving records of the lives lost that night in 1912, with a text emphasizing less the well-known play-by-play and more the personalities involved.


There are all sorts of stories of the shipwreck, but naturally eyewitness accounts are the most impressive. One such survivor, an observant young woman named Violet Jessup, wrote her memoirs in 1934. They are published for the first time in Titanic Survivor: The Newly Discovered Memoirs of Violet Jessup, Who Survived Both the Titanic and Britannic Disasters. She was a steward aboard the Titanic and a wartime nurse aboard the Britannic, and her story is as compelling as any in the disaster's lore. Surprisingly, it's also funny.

    Titanic Survivor:
    The Newly Discovered Memoirs of Violet Jessup, Who Survived Both the Titanic and Britannic Disasters
    Sheridan House, $23.95
    ISBN 1574090356

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If you worry you missed the boat and want to catch up, you might try The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Titanic, by Jay Stevenson and Sharon Rutman. Like others in this series (which add up to a veritable idiot's encyclopedia), this book manages to cram an astonishing amount of information into an irresistible browser format.


The most original new contributions to Titaniana are not even books at all. The Titanic Collection: Mementos of the Maiden Voyage is a handsomely packaged collection of facsimile documents. They come in a booklike box designed to resemble a steamer trunk, complete with hinges. A tray sets inside the trunk, and both spaces are filled with extraordinary facsimiles. Items include copies of a first class passenger ticket, the menu for the fateful night, the music repertoire, telegraph flimsies, luggage labels (yes, they're adhesive), smudged and scribbled postcards, and many other documents.


The packaging on Titanic: The Official Story is not quite so impressive, but the facsimiles are great fun. These documents are larger, and include stateroom charts, a newspaper page, the ship's register form, telegrams. Far more evocative than mere photos of artifacts.


As you leave the bookstore with this armload, on your way to buy the video of Cameron's Titanic, rest easy in the knowledge that at least a sequel seems unlikely.


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